H ere’s a tip for a rainy day: the Yale University Art Gallery offers excellent shelter. There’s even a place to hang your dripping coat.

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Free and open to the public six days a week, you can duck in, drips and all, without a sense of impropriety. Do, however, bring a sense of wonder. Objects of great beauty and history, many of them literally or virtually priceless, fill nearly every room of the gallery’s expansive layout. That includes its fleetingly water-flecked windows, often grand enough to register as works of art themselves. Passing through them, as well as through translucent ceiling tiles on parts of the top floor, the cooler, more diffuse light of a wet, cloudy day adds extra mystique to the YUAG’s precious contents.

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But perhaps it’s more the looking out than the looking in that’s so special on a rainy day. There’s just something nice about watching a good storm from a warm, dry place, especially when you’ve got some world-class glass to look through.

Written and photographed by Dan Mims. The window in photo #1 is reflecting a brightly painted wall inside the YUAG, giving the image that zany coloration. To view the above images in their full, uncropped glory, check out the email version of this article.